Customer is the King or Queen.
That is even more so in this Internet Age where customer experience can get
shared easily using social media. The establishment of relationship with the
customer starts the moment he includes a few items in his shopping cart of the
e-commerce store.
Once the customer selects items and make payment, the order is
supposed to have been captured. The order details along with items purchased,
quantity, delivery address and any special instructions like gift wrapping or
pre-defined time of delivery are to be provided to the fulfillment team. Based
on the type of payment - cash on delivery or pre-paid - the process differs for
delivery of items purchased.
The moment order is placed, the customer would be keen to receive
them as per the delivery dates promised by the vendor. There must be a provision for the customer to track his orders on the
e-commerce site where he purchased the items. Sites like Flipkart, owing
to their own delivery services, provides that mechanism on their site itself.
In cases like Indiatimes Shopping, the delivery status can be verified by using
the tracking number associated with the 3rd party courier service (like
Bluedart or Dhelivery) mentioned in the Order. For a customer, it does not
matter how the delivery happens as long as it happens in time. For e-commerce
companies, the operations to support delivery forms the backbone.
Whether the customer experience
has been good or bad, it must be captured in a
system for critical analysis later. The issues
could be about payments, shipping or the item itself. Any immediate
problems must be addressed with a sense of urgency. Customers in India (not
sure about global space) are sensitive about payment issues, even if the amount
involved is small. So issues like double charge for the same Order, refund of
money in case of credit-card payments for Order cancellations or issues related
to discount must be addressed immediately. Otherwise, the risk of losing that customer and hence his entire network of
online buying family and friends looms large at the e-commerce vendor. My bad
experience in shopping with Indiatimes was effectively addressed by the
company.
Once the customer is happy with his overall experience on an
e-commerce store, he is going to come back again. The entire e-commerce business hinges on acquiring large numbers of such
customers, who provide repeat business. Hence, it is very important to
keep track of such customers and provide benefits to them for their
loyalty. I have not seen any e-commerce
store in India offering any substantial loyalty services. Or maybe I have not
come across one so far.
But, information about new products, special discounts, pre-launch
offers and clearance sales needs to be dispatched to all the customers on
regular basis to keep the touch-point with them
alive.
Needless to say, e-commerce companies must rely on information
technology for all the above CRM needs. Customer,
order, shipping, payment and feedback information gets stored in appropriate
database. Huge amounts of this data can be moved to data warehouses and
analyzed for business insights.
E-mail, Chat and Voice Support are
the primary channels through which customer communicates with the
e-commerce company. One key aspect in providing support to the end-customers is
to integrate all these channels at the back-end. Irrespective of the channels I
use - this could be many for an issue with the same order - to complain about
an Order, it must be resolved.
If you are an end-customer - did you get that wonderful experience
from that e-commerce store?
If you are an e-commerce company - could you acquire and retain
customer and improve the loyalty base over a period of time through CRM?